I have no other way to express my objection and disagreement with your opinion of the organizers and spectators—especially the young people—who took part in the musical event entitled “Blues nad Bobrem,” organized for the sixth time by the Bolesławiec Cultural Centre.
During your sermon on 20 August 1995, devoted to the prayer “Our Father,” you used a negative example to illustrate your thesis about the dehumanization of young people—as if those attending the final “Blues nad Bobrem” concert had demonstrated such dehumanization by taking drugs, drinking alcohol and causing trouble. There were also suggestions that young people like that certainly do not recite the “Our Father.”
These words deeply hurt the organizers of the event, the young people involved in organizing it, and the enormous number of people and institutions that supported us financially and with practical assistance in many matters.
I was a teacher for too long not to know that this is how a gulf is created between the younger generation and the adult world, and that an opportunity is being wasted to truly get to know the younger generation, which expects us adults to respect them and the matters that concern them.
It would benefit both sides if priests and catechists, like many teachers at our schools, also met their pupils at concerts, poetry evenings, vernissages and in cinemas. They would discover that the same young people who like blues and attend rock concerts also become involved in charitable initiatives, write poems for the benefit of others (and someone once said: “read poets, they all speak with God”), paint, compose—in short, participate in and themselves create contemporary cultural life. And they are certainly searching for their place in the world.
They are astonished that this brutal world can accuse them of dehumanization even through the words of its priests, simply because the music they like is somewhat louder than other music.
Do we ask how today’s young people feel? Do we know them at all? Their situation is worse than ever. Consider this: before our eyes, every taboo is ceasing to exist, the rules governing how people relate to one another have become lost, and for many people the authority of their father and mother, their teacher, and their priest has collapsed. Education is being replaced by the temporary authority of peers.
What has happened? What has occurred that means an entire successive generation is becoming lost before our eyes?
Please also consider that we adults ourselves are unable to cope with difficult times, while expecting so much from young people. We constantly lecture, threaten and stigmatize instead of setting an example, asking questions and talking... sometimes attending a concert and hearing and seeing, and asking ourselves what occupies the minds of today’s girls and boys. What do they admire? Do they have any ideals or role models? Why those ones? Or why is no one worthy of admiration? Why do they run so far from a world governed by adults?
And then it will be harder for us to utter harsh, accusatory words.
Along with this letter, which I am sending to the local press, I am sending you clippings from several newspapers about the event you assessed so negatively. I can also provide additional information about the activities of the Bolesławiec Cultural Centre.
In my statement, I omit an attempt to describe the feelings of the employees of the Bolesławiec Cultural Centre, who, to put it simply, are sorry.
Yours respectfully, in the hope that our shared concern for the younger generation will result in the cooperation that is so necessary
dr Danuta Maślicka, director of the Bolesławiec Cultural Centre